Gmail Now Supports IMAP

Gmail now supports IMAP, in addition to POP3. So use it if you want it.

Source: Google Blog

Google Buys FeedBurner

Google has sealed the deal on a purchase of the popular FeedBurner service. I have loved FeedBurner for a while now, though I don’t really take advantage of all their features. It might be that great logo or their elegant and simple site design. I do use them to alleviate the stress of serving my site’s feed. I just hope that Google doesn’t ruin them. Google has a tendency of neglecting services they buy. They just became too big and unwieldy.

Source: Feedburner blog - It’s True-gle

Are New Google Ads Doing Evil?

Google’s AdSense blog just posted news of a change in the look of AdSense ads. Gone is the “Ads by Google” bar at the top, replaced with a smaller mention in the bottom right of an ad unit. They write that “the new formats are not only visually appealing to users, but they also perform even better for publishers and advertisers.” This doesn’t mean they are better for ad viewers.

Is it any question whether an ad will perform better if it blends in with the page so well and only says it is an ad at the bottom in a small area? This smells like Google is being evil and sacrificing transparency in search of the almighty dollar. Of course the old format did look bad.

Source: Inside Adsense: A fresh, new look for AdSense ads

Google Apps Gets New Control Panel, Enters Domain Business

In an update to my previous post on Google Apps Premier, it seems Google has unveiled a new control panel for Google Apps. I was struck by how great it looks, and more intuitively breaks up the admin features.

The new administrator control panel makes it even easier for you to get started maintaining your Google Apps services, managing your user accounts, and customizing the look and feel of Google Apps to meet the needs of your organization. Some of the main highlights include:

Easier customization of individual services

An improved interface to get to the features you need, faster

Additional tools to monitor what’s happening on your domain

They are also now selling domains for $10 each. This goes against their previous promises that they weren’t entering the domain registration business and only became a domain registrar to get more information about domains for ranking search results. The domain registration appears to be powered by GoDaddy according to their screenshot.

Source: Google Apps: new features for users

Google Apps Premier Edition

Google Apps for Your Domain has been rebranded as Google Apps. They have added the much rumored Premier Edition. Both the Standard and Premier editions offer Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, Page Creator and Start Page. They also both offer no preset user account limit (an upgrade from the previous version), mobile access, and an administrator control panel.

For $50 a year per user account, the Premier accounts have 10GB of space as opposed to 2GB for the Standard. Text-ads also become optional under Premier, and you get 99.9% uptime guarantee for email. Premier accounts have 24/7 assistance, including phone support, and APIs to integrate with your existing infrastructure (single sign-on, email gateway, etc). You can try it free until April 30th.

Via Google Operating System (unofficial google news)

Terrorists Using Google Earth to Attack UK Troops?

A UK newspaper has published an article about print-outs of aerial photography taken using Google Earth being found during raids of the homes of insurgents. The photos may have been used by terrorists attacking British bases in Basra, Iraq. They show buildings in the bases, tent areas, bathrooms, and more. The photos may have also been two years old, but if bases didn’t change much they would have been useful. The photos are at least older than March 2003, since that is when the Iraq War began. The British camps fend-off daily mortar and rocket attacks according to the article.

This begs the question: should Google Earth/Maps be banned in certain high-risk areas? And if so who determines what areas to blackout, and where does it stop? We have ourselves a very slippery slope.

Source: Telegraph

Google Removes Tips

Google has apparently removed the tips they where showing below the search box. For example: if a search had the word “blog” in it users would see a tip telling people that Blogger was a good place to start a blog. They still advertise their products in the blue Sponsored Link section above search results.

This saves me from creating a Greasemonkey script to remove the tips. I tried briefly but ran into issues when I needed to find which table contained the tip so I could hide it. The tips were bad because they weren’t tied to the actual search context, but rather individual words found within the search keywords. This meant you saw the tips whether people were looking for the Google product or not. Also, in many instances the Google product wasn’t the leader of its category. This gave Google unearned traffic.

Source: Google Blogoscoped (Via Ionut)

Where Have All the Google Desktop Gadget Christmas Trees Gone?

The Google Desktop blog brings word of three christmas-themed Google Desktop Gadgets for download. Unfortunately they no longer seem to be accessible. Has Google removed the Holiday section? It looks like it has.

They only had Christmas tree gadgets that were user-made. Sure it would have been nice to see a Hanukkah gadget, but it’s a lot less fun to light a candle than it is to decorate a Christmas tree.

(Word of the gadgets via Ionut Alex. Chitu)

Google Finance Data Now Goes Back to 1970

Google Finance data only went back to 2001 until recently. You can now find historical data going back to 1970. I think they also recently added dividends, unless they have been there a while and I missed it. Combine that with after hours quotes and being able to import portfolios and you have a winning combination.

Original heads up: Google Operating System

Google Buys Youtube

It appears that Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. I find that this follows along with their new mission for engineers to stop launching so many new services and instead make existing ones work together better. It is a sign that they are leaning away from a purely engineer driven approach, and leaning toward acquiring services that have done a better job than they have been able to do at reinventing the wheel.

YouTube will “remain an independent brand, in order to preserve its community” (Nathan). Google Video will still remain, but YouTube will get Google’s infrastructure and expertise. They’ll have smarter people helping them improve algorithms and features. Nathan has some great coverage of the conference call, and a summary of coverage around the web.

Along with the recent Google deals with Warner and Sony BMG, this means that Google and YouTube will have the means to monetize and legitimize their content.

Sources: spread throughout this post